Posts Tagged ‘Oculus Rift’

God only knows where they get the money from, but hardware firm Razer are a reliable source of massively optimistic gaming tech that it’s hard to believe will ever quite take off despite how it appealing it sounds on paper. Hands up who owns a Razer Hydra? Or a Razer Edge Pro? Or is planning on a Project Christine? Well, maybe this one will hit the big time: OSVR, an attempt to essentially make games which support one type of VR headset play nice with any type of VR headset.Read the rest of this entry »

As someone with eyes too shrewd to fall for the smoke and mirrors of Oculus Rift (the images don’t merge), I seek alternative entertainment from cybergoggles. I want to stand by and titter as people with gullible eyes experience horrible and terrifying things, wailing and flailing as they sit in comfy chairs with black boxes strapped for their foreheads. I am very keen to watch people playing NoLimits 2 Roller Coaster Simulation with its newly-added Rift support. I might shake their chair gently then leap back away from the torrent of vomit. You and your foolish eyes.

Although not specifically an Oculus Rift game, it’s hard to imagine playing Narcosis without the headset. The game is an underwater survival story which demands the player manage his or her oxygen supply as they navigate the ocean depths when an incident leaves them stranded.

“The perception is that it’s a horror game and that’s cool,” says David Chen, part of the development studio Honor Code. “But we’re definitely hoping for some moments of beauty.”

In space no-one can hear you no no no do not start an article about an Alien game that way, Meer. You’re better than that, dammit.

Straight to business instead: as mentioned in the last Tunnel Vision, it didn’t take long for folk to work out that a simple ini tweak would reinstate Alien Isolation’s missing Oculus Rift support. I say ‘missing’, but the reality is that it was only ever an experimental mode left in for internal and promotional mucking-about-with.Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the worst that can happen in Surgeon Simulator? You yank some poor shlub’s eyes out and they die with scalpels stuck in their brain? Pff! I’ve killed thousands of men in video games. What difference does one more make? No one cares about you, patient man. We do care about ourselves, though. We care about ourselves and keeping all our limbs attached. We care about keeping crocodiles and sharks sedated during surgery so they don’t surge forwards and chomp off our hand. That’s why the terrors of Big Teeth feel so very real and wholly believable to us all.

My VR column returns! Now that my Oculus DK1 is replaced by a less nauseasome DK2 at last, the pressing problem is less “ooh, me poor peepers” and more “so, er, what is there to actually play?” The stark fact of the matter is that very few developers have yet included meaningful Oculus support, because this is not yet a consumer device. This is very much the case at a software level as well as a hardware one.

In the next column I’ll do a round-up of some of the more interesting experiments doing the rounds for DK2, but today I want to talk about VorpX. It’s a name that sounds like an ill-advised sci-fi remake of Jabberwocky, but actually it’s paid software which forcibly injects VR support into all kinds of PC games that don’t otherwise support it.

What is it about the Oculus Rift that inspires nostalgia for the ’90s? Other than how that’s the last time virtual reality was The Next Big Thing, of course. Earlier today we peeked at Pixel Rift, which larks about in simulated childhood, and now I’m seeing A Night at the Roculus travelling back in time to enjoy one of the era’s most popular pastimes: rocking out in a horseless carriage. (No, it’s inspired by a different Saturday Night Live skit). It’s controlled by moving your head to dance along and score points. And what do points mean? Nostalgic references to ’90s television game shows.

Remember having a Game Boy and trying to play it at every available opportunity? Hiding it under your desk or duvet just to get that extra slice of time with your latest cartridge of dreams? Why, when I was a whippersnapper…

… actually when I was a whippersnapper I did nothing of the sort. The Game Boy belonged to my brother and I was allowed to go on it if I paid him or if I traded him something interesting or valuable*. It seems Ana Ribeiro did not have to contend with that sort of nonsense as her semi-autobiographical game Pixel Rift has her perching a Game Girl across her knee as she plays, trying to conceal it from her teacher.

Is the 970 the new no brainer, the default weapon of choice for any of you lot with around £250 / $300 to spend on graphics? As I write these words, yes. Nvidia really has produced something very special. But then I’m writing these words roughly 24 hours before you’ll read them and by then it’s just faintly possible Nvidia’s main rival AMD might very well have buggered things up for me with its own announcement. Again! It was ever thus in the graphics card silly season…oh, and we have a little update on AMD vs Nvidia in the battle for virtual reality rendering supremacy. Read the rest of this entry »

The possible future is here, delivered by a nice man from UPS after a challenging five-month wait on my part. The first gen Oculus I’d been using had sadly morphed from toy of tomorrow into insufferable antique in the time it took for my gen 2 Oculus pre-order to process, and I’d almost forgotten why I was once so charmed by the whole concept of VR headsets.

The Oculus Development Kit 2, which I’ve been using for just under a week now, is an excellent reminder. My excitement is back, and I have a raft of new games, mods and experiments with which to assault my now bone-dry eyeballs. At the same time, I’ve been a little underwhelmed by this new-gen prototype.Read the rest of this entry »

Good news for people who like spinning around in their chair. This weekend saw the Oculus Connect conference take place, at which Oculus’ many smart people gave talks about the future and current state of VR. In between talks by Abrash, Iribe and Carmack, Oculus also revealed their latest prototype, called Crescent Bay. It features “new display technology, 360° head tracking, expanded positional tracking volume, dramatically improved weight and ergonomics, and high-quality integrated audio.”

I’m three columns into this series of Oculus Rift round-ups, and it’s telling that so far I haven’t covered anything that would fit the formalist description of a game. No, I’m not getting involved in anyone’s tiresome war about Proteus or Gone Home, but sticking to a more universal whipping boy – the first-gen Oculus’ issues with readable text, usable HUDs and motion sickness. Clearly VR still being the wild west plays a major role in keeping devs from making large-scale games for it, as does there being a limited install base for now, but the real problem is getting any of this stuff past experiment status. Let’s look at some of the games which try to regardless.Read the rest of this entry »

Apologies, this latest in my ongoing Oculus Rift / VR curiosities column is a week late, due to most of the RPS staff being dead last week. On with the sterescopic show, anyway – this week I’m looking at Rift games/experiments which are based to some degree around the concept of sitting in a chair. This turns out to be far more fertile ground with reality-shifting cleverness than it might sound.